After I returned to my room, I found that Terra was absent, likely visiting with either Aurivy or Udona. This left the room empty, so I moved over to my computer desk. Propped up against it was my personal sword, which I immediately deposited into the bag of holding, before moving to check on the world.
After the discovery of the ‘elixir’, as the dwarves had taken to calling it, Crown Range underwent a shocking change. No longer was blacksmithing the only highly respected class. Instead, in a rather unusual development, the chef class began to gather more and more attention. That was because they were able to more easily identify and replicate the effects of the elixir.
In fact, with Horshaft’s claims of how he created the initial product, they already had a steady supply of elixir on hand. The problem was, the effects of the elixir did not target everyone equally. Those with specific classes- the warriors, miners, guards, leatherworkers, and berserkers- found themselves unable to enjoy these effects to the same degree as others. This was a particularly important problem because the ones who could be said to have the greatest need of its ability to relieve pain were just those people.
This is where the chefs came in. After studying the initial concoction, they began working with herbalists and alchemists to try to create something stronger. Something that would be able to relieve the pain of even the greatest miners. They tried repeated experiments, but could never quite get anything good enough, not until nearly two years later.
After two years of study, they created a tonic that was able to give the same level of relief to even the guards and the miners that the normal citizens enjoyed. They labeled this creation ‘firespit’, due to the fact that a stray spark caused the liquid to ignite when it was introduced to a blacksmith’s workshop.
However, the creation of firespit brought with it another problem. While it allowed those unaffected by the elixir to enjoy its benefits, those with weaker constitutions were hit with something far stronger. When a chef took a glass of firespit for his experiments, he later heard that he was standing naked outside of his cave shouting the glory of his creation.
“Wait, so that’s how they become blatant alcoholics? Some never-ending spiral of booze?” I asked myself incredulously. Out of curiosity, I went to check the human and beastkin cities. Terra had mentioned to me that they were already producing alcohol long before the dwarves, so I was interested in seeing if they had similar issues.
What I found, was that the obsession really only occurred with the dwarves. While the humans and beastkin did also mass produce the alcohol, it was not nearly with the same passion. The humans used it as merely a common drink, while the beastkin enjoyed it at festivals. Compared to them, the dwarves who had almost made a religion out of creating alcohol were lightweights.
Maybe I should go ahead and fast forward a bit further. I mused to myself. However, there was another matter that I wanted to take care of before I allowed the time to fast forward any further.
Pulling out my handy messaging paper, I wrote to Ryone. Think we’ve got the budget for the next tier or two of monsters? We had only been using three tiers for a while now, and I recall seeing there be as many as ten tiers.
Soon, I saw a reply writing itself into the paper. What’s our balance at now? That reminded me that I hadn’t checked for any new achievements or royalties in a while. I could see the blinking light at the corner of the screen, alerting my to new notifications. Part of me was actually dreading opening it, due to the imminent flood of pop-ups that came with it. Still, I must persevere!
Reaching up, I clicked on the icon and found my screen flashing repeatedly with pop-up after pop-up. Some were letting me know about royalties for the items I listed, and others were achievements or technology advancements. I hurriedly closed any of the less interesting windows, the ones that just said stuff like ‘so and so bought such and such, your royalties are this much’. I really didn’t need to see every individual window like that.
In the end, I was left with a series of achievements, and the technology upgrades. Most of the achievements awarded nothing but points, so I dismissed those readily. There was one, however, that caught my eye.
Congratulations! Earth has earned an achievement!
For having a civilization reach the Metal Age, your world has earned the Forged from Fire achievement. +15 points |
Guess the dwarves finally managed to qualify for an advancement. That, or this message has been waiting for me for quite a while. I thought to myself, before noticing another similar message.
Congratulations! Earth has earned an achievement!
For having a civilization reach the Arcanum Age, your world has earned the Spellforge achievement. +15 points |
I’m going to guess elves for this one. I thought to myself with a nod, before opening up the technology advancement window. This time, the list was far too large for me to pay attention to everything, as it seemed that the different civilizations hit a sudden boom for technology growth. A few notable advancements were two races that seemed to get the second level of boats, as well as several accounts of ‘History Documentation 1’.
Putting all of that aside, I let the points tally up with what I already had in my balance, before writing the number back to Ryone. 2283. How was a Keeper supposed to actually run out of points, unless they kept buying more and more worlds?
Well, that was probably exactly what happened. After all, more worlds meant more fighting power, and more chances to survive the Keeper Games. Of course, to a newer Keeper like myself, the points just seemed to add up quicker than I could spend them.
Okay… I can sleep for a little while, while the world fast forwards. Then, maybe I’ll descend for a bit, see how the world is working up close.
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